Prevalence of neuropsychiatric symptoms in patients with mild cognitive impairment at King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital

Abstract

Background: Thailand has already become aging society since 2005. Previous studies showed that cognitive impairment is common in the elderly. Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is a cognitive decline condition between the normal aging and dementia population. Moreover cognitive impairment condition is commonly found with neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS). NPS are significantly related to poor disease prognosis and can cause serious care problems.
Objective: To estimate the prevalence, severity and character of NPS in Thai patients with MCI.
Methods: A Cross-sectional descriptive study conducted in 100 patients, who were diagnosed with MCI by the international working group criteria. The main outcome was the prevalence of NPS in Thai patients with MCI. This study used the Neuropsychiatric Inventory Questionnaire (NPI-Q) for the main measurement.
Results: The mean age was 71.3 years, 65% were females. The mean TMSE, MoCA scores and DAD-T percentage were 27.8, 21.7 and 96.6, respectively. The prevalence of at least one NPS was 65%. It was found that the most common NPS was irritability (33%), the second was sleep problems (31%), the third was anxiety (29%) whereas the lowest prevalence was hallucination (6%). The presence of NPS had a significant relationship with using the lipidlowering drug and history of others noticed that the subject had memory/attention problems. The MCI patients with NPS had lower total DAD-T percent, MoCA and TMSE scores. A large part of the variance in DAD-T(43%), MoCA(27%) and TMSE(17%) was explained by mainly agitation and apathy.
Conclusions: NPS are very common in Thai MCI patients. Therefore, the management of patients with MCI should always be assessed for NPS.